1
"I hope you realize, Horatio, that it was Barbara who got you out of
that mess?"
"Barbara showed a great deal of intelligence; but you must give me
credit for some tact and discretion of my own," Mr. Waddington said as
he left the drawing-room.
"_Was_ he tactful and discreet?"
"His first letters," said Barbara, "were masterpieces of tact and
discretion. Before he saw the danger. Afterwards I think his nerve may
have gone a bit. Whose wouldn't?"
"It _was_ clever of you, Barbara. All the same, it must have been rather
awful, going for her like that."
"Yes."
Now that it was all over Barbara saw that it had been awful; rather like
a dog-fight. She had been going round and round, rolling with Mrs.
Levitt in the mud; so much mud that for purposes of sheer cleanliness it
hardly seemed to matter which of them was top dog at the finish. All she
could see was that it had to be done and there wasn't anybody else to do
it.
"You see," Fanny went on, "she had a sort of case. He _was_ making love
to her and she didn't like it. It doesn't seem quite fair to turn on her
after that."
"She did all the turning. I wouldn't have said a thing if she hadn't
tried to put the screw on. Somebody had got to stop it."
"Yes," Fanny said. "Yes. Still, I wish we could have let her go in
peace."
"There wasn't any peace for her to go in; and she wouldn't have gone.
She'd have been here now, with his poor thumb in her screw. After all,
Fanny, I only pointed out how beastly it would be for her if she didn't
go. And I only did that because he was your husband, and it was your
thumb, really."
"Yes, darling, yes; I know what you did it for. ... Oh, I wish she
wasn't so horribly badly off."
"So do I, then it wouldn't have happened. But how can you be such an
angel to her, Fanny?"
"I'm not. I'm only decent. I hate using our position to break her poor
back. Telling her we're Waddingtons of Wyck and she's only Mrs. Levitt."
"It was the handiest weapon. And you didn't use it. _I'm_ not a
Waddington of Wyck. Besides, it's true; she can't blackmail him in his
own county. You don't seem to realize how horrid she was, and how jolly
dangerous."
"No," Fanny said, "I don't realize people's horridness. As for danger, I
don't want to disparage your performance, Barbara, but she seems to me
to have been an easy prey."
"You _are_ disparaging me," said Barbara.
"I'm not. I only don't like to think of you enjoying that nasty scrap."
"I only enjoyed it on your account."
"And I oughtn't to grudge you your enjoyment when we reap the benefit. I
don't know what Horatio would have done without you. I shudder to think
of the mess he'd have made of it himself."
"He was making rather a mess of it," Barbara said, "when I took it on."
"Well," said Fanny, "I daresay I'm a goose. Perhaps I ought to be
grateful to Mrs. Levitt. If he was on the look-out for adventures, it's
just as well he hit on one that'll keep him off it for the future. She'd
have been far more deadly if she'd been a nice woman. If he _must_ make
love."
"Only then he couldn't very well have done it," Barbara said.
"Oh, couldn't he! You never can tell what a man'll do, once he's begun,"
said Fanny.
2
Meanwhile Mrs. Levitt stayed on, having failed to let her house for the
winter. She seemed to be acting on Barbara's advice and refraining from
any malignant activity; for no report of the Waddington affair had as
yet penetrated into the tea-parties and little dinners at
Wyck-on-the-Hill. Punctually every Friday evening Mr. Thurston of the
Elms, and either Mr. Hawtrey or young Hawtrey of Medlicott, turned up at
the White House for their bridge. If Mrs. Dick Benham chose to write
venomous letters about Elise Levitt to old Mrs. Markham, that was no
reason why they should throw over an agreeable woman whose hospitality
had made Wyck-on-the-Hill a place to live in, so long as she behaved
decently _in_ the place. They kept it up till past midnight now that
Mrs. Levitt had had the happy idea of serving a delicious supper at
eleven. (She had paid her debts of honour with Mr. Waddington's five
pounds; the fifty she reserved, in fancy, for the cost of the chickens
and the trifles and the Sauterne.) In Mr. Thurston and the Hawtreys the
bridge habit and the supper habit, and what Billy Hawtrey called the
Levitty habit, was so strong that it overrode their sense of loyalty to
Major Markham. The impression created by Mrs. Dick Benham only
heightened their enjoyment in doing every Friday what Mrs. Thurston and
Mrs. Hawtrey persisted in regarding as a risky thing. "There was no harm
in Elise Levitt," they said.
So every Friday, after midnight, respectable householders, sleeping on
either side of the White House, were wakened by the sudden opening of
her door, by shrill "Good nights" called out from the threshold and
answered by bass voices up the street, by the shutting of the door and
the shriek of the bolt as it slid to.
And the Rector went about saying, in his genial way, that he liked Mrs.
Levitt, that she was well connected, and that there was no harm in her.
So long as any parishioner was a frequent attendant at church, and a
regular subscriber to the coal and blanket club, and a reliable source
of soup and puddings for the poor, it was hard to persuade him that
there was any harm in them. Fanny Waddington said of him that if
Beelzebub subscribed to his coal and blanket club he'd ask him to tea.
He had a stiff face for uncharitable people; Elise was received almost
ostentatiously at the rectory as a protest against scandal-mongering;
and he made a point of stopping to talk to her when he met her in the
street.
This might have meant the complete rehabilitation of Elise, but that
the Rector's geniality was too indiscriminate, too perfunctory, too
Christian, as Fanny put it, to afford any sound social protection; and,
ultimately, the approval of the rectory was disastrous to Elise, letting
her in, as she afterwards complained bitterly, for Miss Gregg. Meanwhile
it helped her with people like Mrs. Bostock and Mrs. Cleaver and Mrs.
Jackson, who wanted to be charitable and to stand well with the Rector.
Then, in the December following the Waddington affair, Wyck was
astonished by the friendship that sprang up, suddenly, between Mrs.
Levitt and Miss Gregg, the governess at the rectory.
There was a reason for it--there always is a reason for these
things--and Mrs. Bostock named it when she named young Billy Hawtrey.
Friendship with Mrs. Levitt provided Miss Gregg with, unlimited
facilities for meeting Billy, who was always running over from Medlicott
to the White House. Miss Gregg's passion for young Billy hung by so
slender, so nervous, and so insecure a thread that it required the
continual support of conversation with an experienced and sympathetic
friend. Miss Gregg had never known anybody so sympathetic and so
experienced as Mrs. Levitt. The first time they were alone together she
had seen by Elise's face that she had some secret like her own (Miss
Gregg meant Major Markham), and that she would understand. And one
strict confidence leading to another, before very long Miss Gregg had
captured that part of Elise's secret that related to Mr. Waddington.
It was through Miss Gregg's subsequent activities that it first became
known in Wyck that Mrs. Levitt had referred to Mr. Waddington as "that
horrible old man." This might have been very damaging to Mr. Waddington
but that Annie Trinder, at the Manor, had told her aunt, Mrs. Trinder,
that Mr. Waddington spoke of Mrs. Levitt as "that horrible woman," and
had given orders that she was not to be admitted if she called. It was
then felt that there might possibly be more than one side to the
question.
Then, bit by bit, through the repeated indiscretions of Miss Gregg, the
whole affair of Mrs. Levitt and Mr. Waddington came out. It travelled
direct from Miss Gregg to the younger Miss Hawtrey of Medlicott, and
finally reached Sir John Corbett by way of old Hawtrey, who had it from
his wife, who didn't believe a word of it.
Sir John didn't believe a word of it, either. At any rate, that was what
he said to Lady Corbett. To himself he wondered whether there wasn't
"something in it." He would give a good deal to know, and he made up
his mind that the next time he saw Waddington he'd get it out of him.
He saw him the very next day.
Ever since that dreadful Wednesday an uneasy mind had kept Mr.
Waddington for ever calling on his neighbours. He wanted to find out
from their behaviour and their faces whether they knew anything and how
much they knew. He lived in perpetual fear of what that horrible woman
might say or do. The memory of what _he_ had said and done that
Wednesday no longer disturbed his complete satisfaction with himself. He
couldn't think of Elise as horrible without at the same time thinking of
himself as the pure and chivalrous spirit that had resisted her.
Automatically he thought of himself as pure and chivalrous. And in the
rare but beastly moments when he did remember what he had done and said
to Elise and what Elise had done and said to him, when he felt again her
hand beating him off and heard her voice crying out: "You old imbecile!"
automatically he thought of her as cold. Some women were like
that--cold. Deficient in natural feeling. Only an abnormal coldness
could have made her repulse him as she did. She had told him to his
face, in her indecent way, that love was _the_ most ridiculous thing.
He couldn't, for the life of him, understand how a thing that was so
delightful to other women could he ridiculous to Elise; but there it
was.
Absolutely abnormal, that. His vanity received immense consolation in
thinking of Elise as abnormal.
His mind passed without a jolt or a jar from one consideration to its
opposite. Elise was cold and he was normally and nobly passionate Elise
was horrible and he was chivalrously pure. Whichever way he had it he
was consoled.
But you couldn't tell in what awful light the thing might present itself
to other people.
It was this doubt that drove him to Underwoods one afternoon early in
January, ostensibly to deliver his greetings for the New Year.
After tea Sir John lured him into his library for a smoke. The peculiar
smile and twinkle at play on his fat face should have warned Mr.
Waddington of what was imminent.
They puffed in an amicable silence for about two minutes before he
began.
"Ever see anything of Mrs. Levitt now?"
Mr. Waddington raised his eyebrows as if surprised at this impertinence.
He seemed to be debating with himself whether he would condescend to
answer it or not.
"No," he said presently, "I don't."
"Taken my advice and dropped it, have you?"
"I should say, rather, it dropped itself."
"I'm glad to hear that, Waddington; I'm very glad to hear it. I always
said, you know, you'd get landed if you didn't look out."
"My dear Corbett, I did look out. You don't imagine I was going to be
let in more than I could help."
"Wise after the event, what?"
Mr. Waddington thought: "He's trying to pump me." He was determined not
to be pumped. Corbett should not get anything out of him.
"After what event? Fanny's called several times, but she doesn't care to
keep it up. Neither, to tell the honest truth, do I.... Why?"
Sir John was twinkling at him in his exasperating way.
"Why? Because, my dear fellow, the woman's going about everywhere saying
she's given _you_ up."
"I don't care," said Mr. Waddington, "what she says. Quite immaterial to
me."
"You mayn't care, but your friends do, Waddington."
"It's very good of them. But they can save themselves the trouble."